Beauty School Drop Outs... or High School?!

I guess this weeks' readings got me thinking about drop- outs. I then preceded to find a very shocking article that was titled "12 Percent of U.S High Schools Could Be Labeled a Dropout Factory". I mean, I knew that there were always going to be kids that dropped out of high school, but I didn't know it was getting to be outrageous. The most drop outs occur in the southern states like Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

A "drop out factory" school is defined by a school that has less than 60% of it's freshman make to senior year. That, to me, is INSANE! I think maybe 5 to 10 of the kids in my senior class of around 300 dropped out! The most likely drop out areas are large cities that have a ton of students or poverty ridden rural areas. What I found more shocking was that 1,700, or TWELVE PERCENT of the high schools in the United States are considered drop out factories! That's one in ten! Utah is the only state in the U.S without a drop out factory school. Probably because not enough people live there! It bothered me a little bit to read the fact that

"Nationally, the high school graduation rate is 70 percent, but for black and Hispanic students, the rate is only 50 percent. Of the 70 percent of U.S. who do graduate high school, only 32 percent will be college ready."

It's sad to know that even still in today's society, blacks and Hispanics are struggling. But these people also make up the lower classes and much of the poverty in the U.S., so it sort of goes hand in hand with not doing well educationally.

This whole article and reading really got me thinking on what can be done about all of these drop outs. As a teacher, you can't really get too involved in a students life. That's not ethical or accepted in your duties. Even if the parents are brought in for meetings, chances are, many times they won't care enough to force their children to graduate from high school. I just hope that all of these kids who are not walking around with diplomas will not spend their lives working at Burger King or McDonald's! And hopefully, a team of intelligent and enlightened people will come up with some sort of plan to help these kids actually want to graduate.

This is the Article!!
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